The Food and Drug Administration on Friday paved the way for children ages 5 to 11 to get Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine. The FDA cleared kid-size doses—just a third of the amount given to teens and adults—for emergency use, and up to 28 million more American children could be eligible for vaccinations as early as next […]
Paving the way for an Ebola-free West Africa
The 2014–2016 Ebola virus epidemic in West Africa was the worst outbreak of the disease since its discovery in the 1970s. Centered in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, the epidemic claimed over 11 300 lives—more than all the previous Ebola outbreaks combined. Subsequent outbreaks as recently as 2021 highlight the fact that the threat is […]
Researchers uncover a way to harness the power of immunotherapy for advanced prostate cancer
It’s a scientific riddle tangled up in a complex web. How do you turn an immune cold cancer into one that responds to immunotherapy? Researchers led by the University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center started with a simple thread: an inhibitor that showed promise against metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer cells. This is the most challenging […]
Researchers discover way to improve immune response
Melbourne researchers have identified a way to improve the immune response in the face of severe viral infections. It is widely known that severe viral infections and cancer cause impairments to the immune system, including to T cells, a process called immune ‘exhaustion’. Overcoming immune exhaustion is a major goal for the development of new […]
Salt substitution—an effective way to reduce blood pressure in rural India
Replacing regular common salt consumed by hypertensive patients in rural areas with a salt substitute can have a significant impact in terms of lowering their blood pressure, a new study by The George Institute for Global Health has revealed. Researchers found that substituting a small part of the sodium in salt with potassium without altering […]
Mix of treatments could be way to restore hand function in thumb-base osteoarthritis
The base of our thumb may be just a small part of our hand, but we rely on it more than we think. Arthritis in that area can have large consequences, often making simple actions such as picking up an object or opening a door an obstacle. Osteoarthritis, which is a type of arthritis, is […]
How reminiscing in the right way can make you feel better in lockdown
Having been ‘fun-starved’ for so long, it’s only natural to want to look back on good times. During the first lockdown, lots of people were posting throwback photos as a way of coping with the loss of their independence. Now, almost a year later, life has become pretty mundane and most of us feel like […]
The sneaky way the coronavirus mutates to escape the immune system
The novel coronavirus has developed a number of worrisome mutations, resulting in multiple new variants popping up around the world. Now, a new study sheds light on how the virus mutates so easily and why these mutations help it “escape” the body’s immune response. The study researchers found that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, […]
What happens when your brain can’t tell which way is up or down?
What feels like up may actually be some other direction depending on how our brains process our orientation, according to psychology researchers at York University’s Faculty of Health. In a new study published in PLoS One, researchers at York University’s Centre for Vision Research found that an individual’s interpretation of the direction of gravity can […]
New type of immunotherapy may pave the way for better cancer treatments
Immunotherapy for cancer has made great advances and many patients can now receive effective treatments that were not available 10 years ago. However, there are certain types of cancer that do not respond to existing immunotherapy. A study from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) reports on […]